Car Bomb, Shelling Kill 78 In Lebanon

August 21, 1985|By United Press International

BEIRUT — At least 78 people died in Lebanon Tuesday after a car wired with two bombs exploded in Tripoli and rival Lebanese militiamen shelled Beirut.

''The balance of terror is tipping the country toward the abyss,'' said the French-language newspaper, L'Orient-Le Jour, reflecting concerns that Syria, the region's most influential power broker, was unable to stop the bloodshed.

''It's the game of death in its ugliest form,'' said Selim Hoss, education and labor minister. ''We are like cards that are being burned, but even the players . . . are prisoners in this hellish game.''

Meanwhile, Moslem leader Nabih Berri vowed ''decisive action'' against Christians as the nationwide violence left at least 78 people dead and 230 wounded.

For more than 24 hours, Christian and Moslem gunners pounded Beirut, its suburbs and dozens of villages to the north, east and south of the capital with artillery, rocket, missile and tank fire. At least 33 people were killed and 140 were wounded, security sources said.

Official Beirut radio said more than 10,000 shells crashed into the area as residents took shelter in basements and underground parking lots. Police called it the worst fighting in six months.

Hoss, a Sunni Moslem, accused the Lebanese army of joining ''this dirty war.''

''For the army to participate in indiscriminate shelling is the ultimate low,'' he said.

The army is deployed along the Green Line that divides the city into Christian east Beirut and Moslem west Beirut.

Berri, who leads the Shiite Moslem militia Amal, denied Christian charges that Moslems were responsible for the escalating violence. Berri said Moslems were fighting ''only because they did not so far deal with Israel's Christian agents in a decisive form.''

The car bomb that exploded in the port of Tripoli, 42 miles north of Beirut, was the fifth such device planted in Lebanon since Aug. 21. At least 45 people died in the blast and 90 others were wounded, Beirut radio said.

The attack was marked by a macabre refinement on the four earlier blasts in Beirut. Police sources in Tripoli said a 4.4-pound explosive charge exploded under a Volvo sedan parked in the crowded Abu Samra neighborhood.

Rescue workers, militiamen and Moslem clerics rushed to the scene -- only to be engulfed in the explosion of about 154 pounds of TNT, which was timed to go off minutes after the initial charge.

''Rescue workers and other people were helping the victims of the first blast when the car bomb went off, throwing bodies and debris everywhere,'' said a Lebanese reporter.

An apartment complex was destroyed and four other buildings were seriously damaged.

Among the injured were Sheikh Kenaan Naji, political director of the Moslem fundamentalist Jundallah militia, and Sheikh Abdel Kerim Badawi, a senior official of Tripoli's dominant Sunni Moslem Tawheed militia.

Western news agencies in Beirut received several claims of responsibility for the Tripoli bombing; most were from previously unknown groups.

Dozens were killed when bombs planted Wednesday and Saturday went off in Christian east Beirut and two bombs exploded Monday in the Moslem western area of the city. Christians blamed Moslems for the bombings in the east, and some Moslems blamed Christians for retaliating Monday.

Also Tuesday, two radio stations reported unidentified warplanes attacked a Shiite Moslem militia-controlled village in central Lebanon.

Sunni Moslem Voice of the Nation radio said the planes were Israeli. Beirut radio did not identify the aircraft and said the jets struck ammunition depots in the village of Hazerta, 16 miles east of Beirut.